Food and comedy: a funny taste

Last week's Comic Relief saw a MasterChef special at 10 Downing Street, in which three telly people cooked lunch for the PM. With the likes of goofy-in-a-not-very-funny-way Miranda Hart and "comedy" Dave Cameron involved, not to mention the humour vacuum that is Monica Galetti, it was a predictably flat skit, with no one appearing sure whether this was a comic or serious exercise. This was a shame, not least because food and comedy go together like peas and carrots.

The Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin put eating, evacuation and sex on a par, in that they all centre on the body's lower stratum and are therefore inherently degrading. It's in this degradation that comedy is found; like eating, shagging, and crapping, "to laugh is natural to man" – one of our basest instincts.

In Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, humour is derived from the grotesque procession of banquets that the protagonists gorge upon, getting drunk and contemplating the best way to wipe one's bottom. South Park's Eric Cartman embodies food's capacity to be grotesquely funny: in one episode placing an intercom by his computer, telling his mother in turn to bring him food and then a bucket. John Belushi's indiscriminate glutton in Animal House similarly seems to define the term salad-dodger; his attempt to stuff an entire burger into his mouth is not recommended viewing for anyone with a full stomach.

Going further down the body from the gut, our sexual organs are another aspect of this degradation, with food and sex providing a fine platform for comedy. Keith's grotesque turn in The Office is made all the funnier by the fact that he's just explained his methods of seduction – no sooner has the viewer had to envisage the obese lothario guaranteeing his quarry "at least one orgasm" than they have to watch him noisily ram a scotch egg into his goateed muzzle.

In a scene that makes all men die just a little inside, Meg Ryan's fake orgasm in When Harry Met Sally is funny largely because of the context, her squeals of pleasure so incongruous in the murmuring diner. There's a similar scene in the criminally underrated Arrested Development in which Gob attempts to arouse Liza Minnelli's Lucille by reading her the menu in a husky growl, only to give her an attack of vertigo.

Like sexual prowess, food is a mark of status. If we can provide it and afford it then our place in society is strengthened. If not we are compromised, and this degradation again offers comic succour. In American Psycho Patrick Bateman is so enraged by Paul Allen's disapproval of his restaurant choice that he hacks him to death with an axe screaming "try getting a reservation at Dorsia now you fucking stupid bastard!" as Huey Lewis and the News shimmer in the background.

As a boy one of my favourite Mr Bean episodes was the one in which he erroneously orders steak tartare and, too embarrassed to send it back, must find ways to deposit the dish about his table. In A Fish Called Wanda, Ken is made agonisingly aware of his low rank when he watches impotently as Otto devours his treasured fish, while Borat's cultural status is highlighted by the toe-curling dinner party with Middle America, which culminates in him bringing a bag of turds to the table and ordering a hooker to come to the house.

About this article

Food and comedy: a funny taste

This article was published on
the Guardian website
at 07.10 EDT on Wednesday 23 March 2011.
It was last modified at 13.00 EDT on Tuesday 3 June 2014.
It was first published at 07.12 EDT on Wednesday 23 March 2011.